UPDATED 14:37 EDT / JANUARY 23 2024

SECURITY

Fast-growing cybersecurity startups Silverfort and Torq raise new funding

Silverfort Ltd. and Torq Technologies Ltd., two cybersecurity startups that logged triple-digit revenue growth last year, have raised fresh capital to continue their sales momentum. 

The companies announced their respective funding rounds today. Tel Aviv- and Boston-based Silverfort provides software that helps enterprises protect employee accounts from hacking attempts. New York-based Torq offers a platform that can automate common cybersecurity tasks such as detecting malware. 

AI-driven IAM security 

Silverfort raised $116 million in Series D funding from a consortium led by Brighton Park Capital. According to the company, the round also included the participation of over a half-dozen other backers, including the venture capital arms of Citibank NA and General Motors Co. Silverfort’s total outside funding now stands at $222 million.

Enterprises use IAM, or identity and access management tools, to power the accounts they create for employees in internal business applications. Silverfort provides a platform that can connect to a company’s IAM tools and map out all the employee accounts they manage. The platform then uses artificial intelligence to find potential cybersecurity risks. 

According to Silverfort, its AI models spot employee accounts that may have been compromised by hackers. The company’s platform also detects accounts that haven’t been breached but include insecure access permissions. It can, for example, identify unnecessary permissions that provide access to sensitive applications not needed for an employee’s work. 

The company also promises to ease the task of managing service accounts, which are used by applications to interact with one another. Its platform uses AI to find all the service accounts in a company’s environment. From there, it searches for cybersecurity risks such as malicious usage patterns. 

“Some of the world’s largest enterprises now trust Silverfort to protect their corporate identities, including multiple Fortune 25 companies, with more than 100 new customers joining us each quarter,” co-founder and Chief Executive Hed Kovetz wrote in a blog post today.

Silverfort says the increased demand boosted its annual recurring revenue by tens of millions of dollars last year. To sustain that momentum, it will use the $116 million funding round announced today to grow its workforce and build more features. The company also plans to forge more channel partnerships.

Cybersecurity hyperautomation 

Torq provides a so-called hyperautomation platform of the same name. The platform makes it possible to create software workflows for automating common cybersecurity tasks. Torq-powered workflows can, for example, recover files encrypted by ransomware and block malicious login requests. 

The company has raised $42 million in funding as an extension to a Series B funding round that first closed three years ago. The new raise saw the participation of Bessemer Venture Partners, GGV Capital, Insight Partners, Greenfield Partners and Evolution Equity Partners. it has received a total of $120 million from investors since launching in 2020.

On occasion of the raise, Torq disclosed that its annual recurring revenue tripled in 2023. The company claims to have grown its customer count by a factor of five in the same time frame. It didn’t reveal more specific numbers. Torq’s installed base now includes publicly traded enterprise software makers such as HashiCorp Inc. and SentinelOne Inc., as well as multiple Fortune 100 companies.

The past year also saw Torq significantly upgrade its platform’s core feature set. The company added a new AI tool, Socrates, that it promises will automate certain advanced cybersecurity tasks. For instance, the tool can analyze the data that an antivirus collects about a file to determine whether it’s malicious and alert administrators if necessary.

“2023 was a year of dramatic customer and revenue focus, product innovation and expansion, and channel and partner momentum, yielding the strongest year for Torq since it was founded,” said co-founder and CEO Ofer Smadari. “We doubled our sales and go-to-market teams to accommodate this fantastic growth.”

Image: Pixabay

A message from John Furrier, co-founder of SiliconANGLE:

Support our mission to keep content open and free by engaging with theCUBE community. Join theCUBE’s Alumni Trust Network, where technology leaders connect, share intelligence and create opportunities.

  • 15M+ viewers of theCUBE videos, powering conversations across AI, cloud, cybersecurity and more
  • 11.4k+ theCUBE alumni — Connect with more than 11,400 tech and business leaders shaping the future through a unique trusted-based network.
About SiliconANGLE Media
SiliconANGLE Media is a recognized leader in digital media innovation, uniting breakthrough technology, strategic insights and real-time audience engagement. As the parent company of SiliconANGLE, theCUBE Network, theCUBE Research, CUBE365, theCUBE AI and theCUBE SuperStudios — with flagship locations in Silicon Valley and the New York Stock Exchange — SiliconANGLE Media operates at the intersection of media, technology and AI.

Founded by tech visionaries John Furrier and Dave Vellante, SiliconANGLE Media has built a dynamic ecosystem of industry-leading digital media brands that reach 15+ million elite tech professionals. Our new proprietary theCUBE AI Video Cloud is breaking ground in audience interaction, leveraging theCUBEai.com neural network to help technology companies make data-driven decisions and stay at the forefront of industry conversations.